by PERVEZ HOODBHOY
In his latest interview to PBS NewsHour, Prime Minister Khan correctly said the US “really messed it up in Afghanistan” and he also rightly questioned America’s motive for invading Afghanistan. In a second interview to Afghan media he denied that Pakistan speaks for the Taliban. This too is technically true. But to keep one’s moral compass straight, one must acknowledge that it wasn’t just America that messed up. Other countries, particularly Pakistan, also helped create the Afghan tragedy.
Let us return to when the Soviet Union was supposedly eyeing the “warm waters of the Persian Gulf”, a ubiquitous phrase of the late 1970s. After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, it was said that Pakistan was next in line. For Ronald Reagan, the Evil Empire and its godless, atheistic communists were on the move; they must be stopped. Agreed, said Gen Ziaul Haq, else Pakistan and Islam would be mortally endangered.
That Pakistan stood in danger was deliberate fabrication. With a failing economy the Soviets had no capacity to move any further, much less another 800 kilometres to the coast. Note also the supreme irony: when a slightly different brand of godless communists did eventually reach the coveted waters, the heavens didn’t fall. In fact, an eager and willing Pakistan rolled out the red carpet upon which the Chinese walked down to Gwadar. Contrary to Gen Zia’s dire pronouncements, Islam remains safe from communists even if Uighur Muslims are not.
Russia and USA are squarely responsible for Afghanistan’s tragedy but Pakistan is certainly not innocent.
Post-invasion, we all know what happened. The US embassy in Islamabad hosted the world’s largest covert operation with trained fighters recruited from around the Muslim world. Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, abundantly funded and supplied, helped the CIA organise the world’s very first international jihad. A decade after the invasion, while preening before journalists and twirling his moustache, ISI’s head, Gen Hamid Gul, boasted to the world that he and his men had brought down the Soviet Union.
Let’s speculate what might have happened if Pakistan had spurned America’s enticements to battle its Cold War rival. What if Pakistan had let the Soviet invasion run its course instead of creating, arming, and organising the forces of resistance? The temptation to ask such ‘what if’ questions is irresistible at a time when apocalypse looms upon Afghanistan.
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